


Control Theory

by alouette_des_champs



Series: Gritty She-boot [2]
Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst with a Happy Ending, Can't find a tag to indicate this is mostly about, College, F/M, Female Friendship, Fluff and Angst, For Science!, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, Mild Sexual Content, Teacher-Student Relationship, That very specific mental breakdown you have in higher education
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-01
Updated: 2020-04-08
Packaged: 2021-02-28 16:37:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23400208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alouette_des_champs/pseuds/alouette_des_champs
Summary: Entrapta does all the work. Hordak takes all the credit.There's a surprising amount of drama in the mechanical engineering department.
Relationships: Entrapta/Hordak (She-Ra)
Series: Gritty She-boot [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1683196
Comments: 15
Kudos: 116





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Quarantine is making me very prolific all of a sudden. I set up the premise for this fic in "See You at Your Funeral" VERY SNEAKILY (read: blatantly and shamelessly). It's set in the same universe, but this one can also stand alone. 
> 
> Writing this has revealed both to me and everyone else that I know jack shit about science. At some point I stopped googling and just started making shit up.
> 
> Jam #1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2m90GEsnIs  
> Jam #2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zhW1cSspkM

Entrapta always forgot to knock. It never even crossed her mind until she was already in the process of throwing a door open, and by that point, it was better just to enter with confidence than to waste time on apologies. This was exactly the case when she barged into Dr. Hordak’s office on a Wednesday afternoon near the beginning of the semester, balancing a disorganized stack of manila folders and loose papers on her hip. She sat down in the chair opposite the unadorned desk, plunked the folders down, and smiled her friendliest smile.

“Hi! I’m Entrapta.” The man on the other side of the desk stared at her, unblinking. Maybe he had forgotten about their appointment. She tried again. “You’re my adviser. Mechanical engineering. We had a meeting.”

“You’re almost an hour late,” the professor said with a frown. He had sharp, angular features and dark hair that was beginning to gray at the temples. His shirt was pressed almost impossibly crisply. The whole look was engineered to be scary, but she wasn’t intimidated. If Entrapta were to let herself be intimidated by every man who gave her a mean look, she would be a shut-in before the end of the week.

She glanced at the clock. He was probably right; she had never been on time for anything in her life. Her mother had always said that she would be late for her own funeral. _Oh well._ Nowhere to go but onward. “Really? Sorry. I get so wrapped up in what I’m doing that I never know what time it is. I’m here now!”

“Right.” He narrowed his eyes like he was looking at an equation whose purpose he could not quite ascertain. “I haven’t seen you on campus. You look a bit different than the rest of my mechanical engineering students.”

“It’s my face,” she supplied helpfully, brushing her purple bangs out of the way so that he could see it properly.

“Excuse me?”

“My face. It’s very symmetrical. The human brain is hardwired to appreciate more symmetrical faces as beautiful. Culturally, you may have been trained to believe that beautiful women can’t be smart, but don’t worry. I am!”

“That’s not it, but thank you.”

“If you say so. Anyway, I wanted you to take a look at these models.” She shuffled through her pile of folders until she came up with the right one. “I just need a fresh set of eyes. I’m driving myself crazy with the—” 

“I’ll take a look at them.” Interrupting was rude, but she decided not to choose this battle. He took the folder from her and set it on a stack of books without opening it.

“Thanks!” She sat there awkwardly for a moment, waiting. His face did not change in the slightest.

“Later,” he amended firmly. “Come by tomorrow.”

“Oh!” She jumped out of the chair, almost knocking it over. “Okay. See you then!”

The next day, Entrapta forgot to knock again, but this time Dr. Hordak seemed ready when she burst in after lunch with her usual Big Gulp of soda. She waved and sat down in the chair across from him. He did not look even slightly happy to see her, but at least he already had her models out on his desk. She could tell they were hers because she had put her signature on the folder, a cute, sparkly little sticker depicting a smiling purple robot waving one clawed hand.

“Where did you get these?” he asked, tapping the folder sternly.

“Um. I made them. On my computer. In my office.” Well, technically it was the office that all the doctoral students had to share, but she got one pitiful corner to call her own. She had tacked some pictures of her cat, Emily, to the wall beside her desktop to make it feel less like she was in prison.

“Plagiarism is a very serious offense, Entrapta.” 

This had happened at least once every single year since she had graduated from high school. She was used to it. She didn’t let it get to her anymore.

“Maybe it would be easier if I just explained my thought process.” She held her hand out, and he reluctantly relinquished the folder to her. She spread the sheets of paper out over the desk and began to hash out her plan step-by-step. It took her a while; there was a reason he had been suspicious. The schematics were complicated, the most ambitious she had attempted to date. Nobody else in her program would have had a hope of understanding what she had here. When she finally finished, she paused, waiting for a response. Dr. Hordak was still staring at the models, looking puzzled, but that was okay. At least he knew that she hadn’t ripped off all her hard work. She stood up and took a long, loud drink of her sugary beverage.

“I don’t need those back. You can keep them if you want. Or just throw them away. Up to you!” With another wave, she made for the door.

“Entrapta,” he called after her. She turned. “I have to apologize. I’ve just never seen work like this from a student before.”

She shrugged. “That’s okay.”

He collected the papers and collated them, returning them to their folder. “Do you still have questions for me?”

A grin spread across her face like lightning.

From then on, they met weekly to discuss her progress. Dr. Hordak found out when her lab times were and started checking in on her periodically. Far from being annoyed, she was thrilled to discuss her research with someone who actually knew what she was talking about, someone who could offer her valuable feedback. Entrapta loved her friends, but as soon as she brought up anything she was working on, every single one of them immediately tuned out. 

Gradually, he started bringing her bits and pieces of his own research for her to look at and give her opinion. This was even more thrilling. Entrapta loved being presented with new problems to solve; it was probably the same feeling other people experienced when someone brought them a gift. She invited herself to his lab times so she could see what his process was like, how he was putting the plans they had discussed into action. It was the first intellectually stimulating partnership she’d ever had; all her lab partners in college had been very nice people who were nevertheless miles behind her with no hope of catching up.

Dr. Hordak was a little bit slower on the uptake than she was, but he was also a lot more methodical. He double-checked numbers instead of just plowing ahead to the next row of equations. He measured everything twice instead of just eyeballing it like she usually did. She left a trail of displaced tools, crumpled papers, and cola stains behind her everywhere he went, while his work space was always tidy, always orderly, and never sticky. Even though it was frustrating to her sometimes—she had better things to do than wipe down counter tops—Entrapta was smart enough to recognize this as a good thing. Her mother had always told her that you were supposed to look for people in life who complement you, who are strong where you are weak.

It wasn’t all good. He could be really grumpy; sometimes he seemed like he was in pain. He would drag a chair into the lab and sit there snapping commands at her, growing steadily more irritated regardless of whether or not she was doing what he wanted her to be doing. Entrapta powered through these days with the same cheerful energy she used to power through every challenge in life. She just tried to use the loudest machines in the lab; you couldn’t hear someone yelling at you over a surface grinder.

It wasn’t until one day when he was trying to show her how to operate the new lathe that the college had purchased that a fascinating thought occurred to her for the first time. Instead of just telling her what lever to pull, he put his hand over hers and helped her pull it as if she had never operated a machine before. He had seen her pull plenty of levers with a high level of efficiency and skill, so that wasn’t the issue. That was when she made the connection: it was distinctly possible that he was sexually interested in her.

Entrapta had never been too concerned with the pursuit of sex or relationships. People didn’t flirt with her—not after she’d opened her mouth, anyway. She saw how much time and energy her friends poured into love or what they thought was love, and she couldn’t justify it. She was too devoted to her research. Even so, it was hard not to be curious, and she couldn’t remain in a state of curiosity for long without finding out an answer one way or another; it wasn’t in her nature.

It only took about two hours for her to break. She turned the lathe off, ripped off her ear protection, flipped up her face mask, marched over to where he was preparing the next piece for the machine, and lifted one of the headphones off his ear so that he could hear her. “Are you flirting with me?”

“That would be very inappropriate,” Dr. Hordak replied coolly, taking off his ear protection the rest of the way. 

“Yeah, I know, but that’s not what I asked.”

“I suppose I was.”

“Ha!” She pointed an accusing finger at him. “Knew it.”

“Does that make you angry?”

She thought about it for a moment, then shrugged. “No.” She flipped the clear face protection mask back down and smiled. “You are hereby authorized to continue flirting with me.”

He laughed. She didn’t think she had ever heard him laugh before. “That’s good to know.”

Even if she hadn’t asked, she would only have had to wait a couple of days for an answer. Their machine shop was different than a traditional laboratory in a lot of ways, but most importantly in that you were exponentially more likely to lose one of your extremities at any given moment. This was a major hazard for someone as scatterbrained as Entrapta. On this particular day, she was working with a machine that kept jamming. Four times out of five, she remembered to power it down before she reached inside to un-jam it. Thankfully, the fifth time, Hordak grabbed her wrist before she could stick her hand inside the machine’s grinding guts.

“Careful!” They both watched as it corrected itself and started back up again, metal clanging and churning in exactly the spot her hand would have been.

“Oh, wow! You saved me at least a couple of fingers!” she exclaimed with a laugh.

“Probably the whole hand,” he replied grimly.

“What would I even do without a hand? You’d have to build me a new one!” He had not let go of said hand. Entrapta suddenly realized that they were standing very close together; she could smell the tasteful cologne he always wore that reminded her of an old-fashioned department store. Suddenly, he leaned down and kissed her, moving uncharacteristically quickly as if forcing himself to act before he thought better of it.

It was kind of nice, to be kissed. The last time she’d done it, she had been too young and too drunk to appreciate it properly, but in that moment she began to understand why her friends wasted so much time and energy on what had always seemed to Entrapta like a never-ending, painful feedback loop.

The next couple of minutes were a flurry of movement; doors were locked, machines were switched off, and leather protective gloves went flying across the room. Her arms were around his neck as he backed her up against the work station, his hands under her thighs lifting her up onto the counter. It was an impressive maneuver to have pulled off without ever breaking an increasingly passionate kiss.

She pulled back for a moment to catch her breath. “Is this what happens with all your students when they violate safety protocol?”

“This is the first time I’ve ever seen someone violate safety protocols quite that egregiously.” His hands roved over her thighs, her hips, along the curves of her waist, normally disguised by her baggy overalls. She smiled, a little more coyly than usual.

“So I’m special.” 

“You’re reckless.” Hordak grabbed the strap of her overalls and pulled her in roughly for another kiss.

If someone had told Entrapta at the beginning of the school year that she would be having some surprisingly athletic sex with her adviser in a machine lab before Christmas break even happened, she would not have believed them, but she loved being proven wrong. Being proven wrong meant there were more possibilities to explore than she had initially realized.

Sex became just another thing they did together, another part of her day. Their business relationship remained basically the same except for the fact that when they were stuck on a problem, they took it to his office and had a quickie on the desk instead of grabbing a coffee or taking a walk. (The chair was out of the question because it had wheels, an important variable neither of them had considered until they had rolled halfway across the office and narrowly avoided some difficult-to-explain, lamp-related head injuries.)

Of course, Hordak was just as methodical in this regard as he was with his lab work, which was something Entrapta could respect. She didn’t have all day. The human body was just another machine, the use of which you could become proficient in if you put forth a little effort. There were, however, some small personal touches that she appreciated. She was surprisingly aroused by the way he clamped his hand down over her mouth when she got too loud (which was always). She’d had to start bringing a comb to work to fix her hair after having her pigtails pulled like she was back in elementary school. She had lost a lot of good overalls buttons to his impatience and had had to walk around the rest of the day with the strap safety-pinned to the bib.

She had expected to feel less valued as a scientist, but she didn’t. If anything, she felt more valuable. Most machines were only designed to perform one essential function, but Entrapta could serve two different purposes at once without losing any of her functionality. A lot of people knew that she was smart and capable. Fewer people thought of her as a sexual being. Only one person saw her both ways. That was a rare thing, She didn’t think she could explain it to anyone, which was an anomaly. Usually she was very good at explaining complex problems.

Saturday morning found Entrapta sitting at the desk in her one-room apartment, typing away furiously at her computer and eating Twizzlers for breakfast. If she wanted to get any work done on her dissertation, she had to do it on the weekends. When she had been focused solely on her own research, she’d had plenty of time to type up her notes during the week, but now that she was also helping with Hordak’s projects, she was in the lab all day, every day. She had to cram everything else in on Saturday and Sunday.

Over on the unmade bed, her phone began to buzz. She ignored it. Probably just the student loan people. Besides, Emily was asleep in her lap like a cute little poof, and it would be a shame to wake her up. A moment later, someone started to lean on their car horn outside. It was easy to tune out most distractions, but this _not_ most distractions. It just kept going and going and going. Finally, she got up, and looked at the window to see what was going on. Much to her surprise, Mermista was sitting in her car outside, parked right under her window. Her friends didn’t usually show up unannounced.

“Come _on!_ ” Mermista hollered. Entrapta waved, grabbed a handful of Twizzlers and her keys, and hurried downstairs. She took a moment to inspect the vehicle before she hopped into the passenger’s seat.

“Is this a new car? Nice! Can I check it out later?”

“Like, what, the engine? Sure, I guess.” Mermista pulled out of the parking lot.

“Where are we going?” Entrapta put her feet up on the dashboard and shoved a Twizzler into her mouth.

“We’re just taking a drive. Since hanging out with our friends is like being on the reboot of _The L Word,_ I thought you and I could have a little chat. About boys.” She grimaced and rolled her immaculately made-up eyes, her signature move. “I guess everybody is worried about you or whatever.”

“About _me?_ Why? I’m doing great!”

She shot her a look. “Let me spell this out for you: you’re fucking your thesis adviser and it’s, like, gross.”

Entrapta pointed a Twizzler at her. “Elaborate.” She hadn’t _meant_ to tell her friends; it had just kind of slipped out. It had been a much bigger deal to them than it was to her. Apparently the sentiment had not died down in her absence.

“Okay, this guy is what, twenty years older than you? Plus, Glimmer ran into him on campus, and she said he had major psycho vibes.”

“‘Vibes’ aren’t real. It’s just her brain generating a data set based on her preconceived notions about men and the meanings of their behaviors.” 

Mermista ignored this comment. “What if this seriously fucks up your career? And that’s not even what I’m—I mean, our friends—that’s not what everyone is worried about. What if you get like, _hurt_ -hurt?”

It finally sunk in that Mermista was genuinely worried. Entrapta’s chest tightened with guilt. She should have done a better job of keeping in touch. “I know I haven’t exactly been communicative for the past couple of months. I’ve been so busy working on my research, working on his research, writing my dissertation…I spend most of my time in the lab, without my phone. It’s so exciting to be able to do whatever I want with all this high-end equipment without having to ask permission…not that I ever really did that, anyway, but now I don’t even get in trouble…I guess I must have gotten kind of swept away.”

“What I took from that is that you’re doing a grown-ass man’s work for him. For free. And also fucking him.” She sighed. “But I’m not gonna talk you out of this, am I?”

“When has anyone ever been able to talk me out of anything?”

“Fine. Just promise me you’ll call me if this shit goes sideways.” Mermista extended her pinkie.

“Pinkie promise.” Entrapta wrapped her pinkie around her friend’s, and they shook. “Okay, if we’re talking about boys, can we talk about _your_ boyfriend?”

Mermista scowled. “No, we cannot.”

“Why not? Is it because he’s always dressed like a pirate?” Entrapta tried and failed to suppress a giggle-snort. “You shouldn’t be embarrassed of your pirate boyfriend! I like him!”

“He works at a theme restaurant, okay?” A dangerous vein was starting to bulge on her forehead. She flipped her hair over her shoulder dramatically and took a sharp turn onto a side street “This conversation has officially ended. I’m taking you home.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The multiple mentions of student loans in this fic is frankly triggering and I should be censored. 
> 
> Uh-oh I had to break out the Sad Adult Man jams: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JODshFyKHuA

Spring semester was not going nearly as smoothly as fall semester had. 

There had been some major setbacks in their research. Well, _Hordak’s_ research. Entrapta’s was coming along nicely, not that anyone had asked. The extra workload that came with troubleshooting had been unrelenting for weeks, but complaining about the opportunity to grapple with tough, real-world obstacles was out of the question. She had to power through like she always did.

They were in his office after hours, paging through lab notes, trying to figure out where things had gone awry. Entrapta was on the floor surrounded by several untidy stacks of print-outs. She had been staring at the same set of models for at least five minutes, trying and failing to focus. She was so tired that she could have curled up and fallen asleep on the carpet. 

“This is never going to work. It’s all flawed from the ground up,” Hordak said, tone disguseted. His face was lit in sharp relief by the blue glow from his computer screen; he looked almost as tired as she was.

“It’s not _that_ bad. We can build another prototype. I think if we just—”

He slammed the laptop shut. Entrapta jumped. “I’m running out of funding. I was supposed to have published by now.”

“It’s okay! We’ll figure it out. I can’t think if you’re yelling.” She pressed her fingertips to her eyelids, summoning all her concentration. No matter how hard she tried to wrap her mind around the it, everything seemed fuzzy and indistinct, incomprehensible. Not being able to understand a problem she should have been able to dismantle and solve was a foreign feeling, a scary feeling.

Entrapta had always been able to handle her high-octane schedule before. She had supported herself through college on scholarships, loans, and unshakably high hopes. Two days with no sleep, a day or two or three with nothing to eat but Twinkies, popping caffeine pills, diet pills, Adderall…she’d done it all back then, and none of it had ever thrown her into a tailspin like this had. 

She kept nodding off at her desk during the day, but when she was at home in her bed, she laid awake all night. She couldn’t turn her brain off; it just kept generating numbers and patterns and ideas ad infinitum. She was breaking out like a teenager, probably because she kept eating the pink, red, and white Valentine’s Day M&Ms for lunch. Her hair was starting to show its natural dark color at the roots; she had been too busy and distracted to get to the store for dye. When she finally checked her phone at the end of the day, she had a million missed texts, both from the group chat and to her personally, but she was usually too exhausted to answer them. She felt like she was breaking down in her usefulness, functionally obsolete, a machine burning itself up from the inside out.

Nothing was exciting anymore, not work, not school, not cute pictures of cats, and definitely not sex. The one or two times they slept together after the entire project had been derailed, it felt like they were taking something out on one another. Entrapta was far too overwhelmed by everything else to try to analyze _that_ too closely, so she kept it to herself and did her best to compartmentalize. Compartmentalizing, however, had its limits; it was not performing its intended function as well as it used to. She was becoming a liability in the lab, even more so than usual. She was making amateur mistakes, costing them valuable time and resources. The more she second-guessed herself, the more she messed up, and vice versa.

It was the third time in one day that she welded the same piece incorrectly that finally tipped the scale.

“What is wrong with you today?” Hordak snapped, looking at the crooked soldering instead of at her. He waved his hand as if to dismiss her. “Just go home, Entrapta.” 

She wanted to make excuses for herself and her unacceptable performance, but she couldn’t organize her thoughts into a sentence. Somewhere between taking off her protective equipment and pivoting for the door, her vision went fuzzy with black static. By the time she had realized something was wrong and reached for the counter, everything was black.

When Entrapta opened her eyes, she was staring up at a bright white light. Was this the hallucinatory phenomenon caused by a release of LSD-like chemicals in the dying brain? Somebody leaned into her field of vision, but it didn’t look like a culturally appropriate guide to the afterlife. It looked like some guy she didn’t know.

“Can you hear me?” he asked.

“Yes. Who are you?”

“I’m a paramedic. Can you tell me your name?”

“Entrapta. Did I blow something up?”

The paramedic looked a little taken aback by this question. “Uh, no. You passed out while you were at school. We’re on our way to the hospital.”

“I don’t need to go to the hospital.”

“You bonked that noggin pretty hard.”

That was when she tried to sit up on the stretcher and passed out for a second time.

When she woke up this time, Entrapta was alone in a hospital bed, hooked to an IV. She had the _worst_ headache, and she felt sick and dizzy. The lights in the room were dim, but even the small amount of fluorescent light hurt her eyes. It was only a few moments before a nurse popped her head in.

“You’re awake!” she said brightly. “Is there anyone I can call for you?”

Well, she _had_ pinkie promised. 

Mermista burst dramatically through the door less than half an hour later.

“What happened?” she demanded. Entrapta meant to tell her that she had passed out in the lab, but once she opened her mouth, everything that had happened that semester came pouring out in a rapid stream-of-consciousness. Mermista sat down on the edge of the bed to listen, her frown deepening by the minute.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” she finished miserably, sinking into her pillow.

“Uh, you’re super stressed out, is what’s wrong with you. Human beings need to eat, sleep, and like, drink water just like robots need…I don’t know…motor oil?”

“That’s not true, but I can appreciate the analogy.”

“I guess Professor _American Beauty_ just watched you totally wreck yourself and didn’t say a word, huh?” Mermista deadpanned. Entrapta wanted to say _he doesn’t have to take care of me,_ which was technically true, but she didn’t think she could get it out. Her emotions were all scrambled along with her brain in what was probably a pretty serious concussion, if she had to guess. She surprised herself by bursting into tears. She almost never cried, and when she did, it certainly wasn’t in front of people.

“Concussions can temporarily change your personality,” she sobbed, wiping her face on the sheet. “That’s probably what’s happening right now.”

“Or maybe you’re just sad because this whole thing fucking _sucks._ But guess what? You’re gonna get through it because you’re a total badass.”

“I am?”

“Duh! How could you _not_ be? You’re like, a genius girlboss with pink hair who dunks on stupid men all day by building cool fucking robots.” Sometimes it was hard to tell whether or not Mermista was being sincere, but this was not one of those times. She had the same look in her eye that she did when she was talking about a good book or her favorite musician. “Speaking of hair…we need to get you to a salon.” She shot a pointed look at Entrapta’s roots. “That’s priority number one after y’know, they let you out of this shitty hospital or whatever.”

“Sorry I made you come all the way out here,” Entrapta sniffled.

“Don’t apologize! Ugh, have you even _heard_ of feminism? Priority number two is catching you up on everything that’s happened since, like, women’s suffrage.” She rolled her eyes. “But seriously. We’re friends. Please call me for all your traumatic brain injuries.” Mermista grabbed her hand and squeezed it. In that moment, it suddenly occurred to Entrapta that her friends liked her for who she was, not for what she could do. Her usefulness or lack thereof was not a factor. If she lost everything she had worked for tomorrow, the only thing that would have mattered to them was whether or not she was okay.

That thought launched her into a second round of tears.

*

Someone rang Entrapta’s buzzer in the early evening. It was probably one of her friends coming to make sure she wasn’t doing any work. The department of engineering had graciously allowed her to take an incomplete and finish her remaining work in the summer, so she had very abruptly found herself with nothing to do and nowhere to go while she recovered from her concussion. Her friends had made it their mission to ensure that she didn’t use her brain too much while it was healing, a truly Herculean task. Perfuma had come by that morning to try to teach her how to do yoga, but she was still too dizzy to go upside down or move around too quickly, so they had just ended up lying on the yoga mats and talking. She hadn’t realized how much she had missed all of them. Being mostly confined to her tiny apartment was making her feel crazy, but everyone’s visits and phone calls and baked goods (cute and mini, just how she liked) had made it a lot more bearable. 

Entrapta guiltily hid the most recent issue of the _American Journal of Mechanical Engineering_ under one of the couch cushions before she buzzed them in, already preparing her defense strategy. _It’s just a little light reading!_ When she opened the door, however, it wasn’t one of her friends standing on the other side. It was Hordak, dressed just as immaculately as always and wearing his usual stern expression. She was surprised into silence.

“I looked up your address on the university system,” he said by way of explanation. “Now that I’m standing here, that feels incredibly unethical.”

She laughed. “Ethics shmethics! I won’t tell. Come in.” She stepped back and gestured to the couch, suddenly very aware of how small and messy her place was. Every available surface was cluttered with books, clothes, and the remnants of projects she had started and then abandoned. She didn’t think he’d ever seen her with her hair down before, let alone in sweatpants and cat-shaped slippers; she felt strangely vulnerable. “You can sit down. Want something to drink? I have Cherry Pepsi and…that’s it.”

“No, thank you.” He looked stiff and awkward sitting on her couch, profoundly out of place next to the heart-shaped, sequined throw pillows. Emily jumped up beside him with an inquisitive chirp. He stared at her like he didn’t know what he was supposed to do with her. It was the same look he had given her the first time they had met in his office.

“That’s Emily,” she said, sitting down beside the two of them and tucking her legs underneath her. “She loves people. You can pet her if you want.”

Hepatted Emily’s head tentatively. She rubbed her ear against his palm, purring.

“Aww! She likes you.”

“She’s…cute.” Hordak fell silent. He was clearly trying to get something out, but either his brain or his mouth was refusing to cooperate. Entrapta waited as patiently as she was able. “I’m sorry I didn’t come with you to the hospital last week.”

“It’s okay. You had other stuff to take care of.”

“And I’m sorry that I put so much pressure on you. That was unfair of me.” She opened her mouth to respond, but he held up his hand to stop her. “One more thing: I’m going to credit you on my study.”

“You don’t have to. That’s not why I helped.”

He shook his head. “Let me make myself perfectly clear. I’m not crediting you to be nice or because you slept with me or to cover myself in all this. I’m doing it because you earned it. You did the work. I would never have gotten as far as I have without you.”

“Oh, you would have,” Entrapta said, waving her hand. “It just would’ve taken you ten extra years.” 

He smiled. “Maybe twenty.”

“Do you even have twenty years left in you, old-timer?”

“I’m only forty-four, Entrapta.”

“Jeez! Basically ancient. A living relic. They should put you in a museum.”

Hordak chuckled, then winced. It was an expression of pain that she recognized, something that she’d had no reason or right to ask about before. Things were different now, or at least, she thought they were. He could have sent her an e-mail to ask how she was doing and tell her that he was putting her name on the study if that was all he wanted; instead, he had showed up at her apartment after violating several university policies to get there. That had to mean something.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, scooting closer.

“It’s nothing.”

“You know I’ll figure it out eventually.”

He sighed. “It’s an old army wound. Shrapnel from an explosion. They pieced me back together somehow, but the nerve damage doesn’t heal. It flares up sometimes.”

“You never told me you were in the army!” Entrapta exclaimed accusingly. That explained _a lot._

“It wasn’t exactly relevant.”

“Can I see?” She reached for his shirt, waiting for his go-ahead. He nodded. She began to unbutton it carefully, afraid to cause him more pain. When she was finished, she pulled the shirt away from his body to that she could inspect the entirety of the scar. It made an irregular crescent shape across his stomach and chest. The skin there was puckered and discolored, shades of red and purple, knotted with scar tissue. Entrapta tried to imagine the injury that would have left behind such a terrible mark, the sharp hunk of curved metal that must have struck perilously close to his heart, must have ruptured organs, must have taken months or years to recover from.

“Is there anything I can do to help?”

The look on his face suggested that he had been expecting her to react differently. “I’m afraid not.” That made her feel profoundly helpless; she concerned herself with problems that could be solved, not ones that just had to be accepted and dealt with. She made a mental note to do some research on blast injuries.

Hordak began to button his shirt up again, eager to hide what he clearly thought was a major deficit. Now that Entrapta thought about it, he had always kept his shirt on during sex. She had never thought twice; it wasn’t as if there had been a lot of time for sensual stripteases. Was it because he thought it was ugly, or because he didn’t want to talk about it? She had a lot of follow-up questions, but most of them seemed insensitive. She tried, for once, to keep her prying to a minimum.

“Were you in the army for a long time?”

“Not long. Maybe six or seven years.”

“That seems like a long time to me!”

“That’s because you’re young. I was only twenty-five when I was discharged. I thought my life was over. My family would have preferred that I’d died, I’m sure, so that they could have had the Purple Heart to hang on the wall instead of all the problems I brought back with me.”

“That’s awful.” 

“It’s in the past. I haven’t spoken to any of them in a long time.”

Maybe it would make him feel more comfortable if Entrapta also contributed something personal about her family. “My parents…did their best. I never really got to be a kid, though. I was always the most grown-up person in the house, which is maybe why I’m the least grown-up person I know now. Not that I’m qualified to make that assessment; psychology is my least favorite of the social sciences.” 

He reached over and a lock of hair behind her ear. “There’s nothing wrong with the way you are.” 

That wasn’t strictly true, but she understood that this was meant to be his personal evaluation instead of an empirical statement. He leaned in to kiss her. She expected it to feel the same way as it had felt when he’d kissed her in the lab, but it was a different kind of kiss. It was the kind of kiss a person might share with their significant other on a Saturday morning when there was no rush to do anything or go anywhere. It was not a means to an end, but an indulgence all its own.

Entrapta decided to try something risky. She inched a little closer and rested her head against his shoulder. “I’m not hurting you, am I?”

“No.” Hordak wrapped an arm around her shoulder. Sensing an opportunity for a nap, Emily immediately climbed into her lap and made herself comfortable.

They sat like that for a long time, not talking. Not needing to talk. She had convinced herself a long time ago that she could cut pedestrian notions like “cuddling” out of her life without any repercussions, but Entrapta was beginning to suspect that she had been wrong about a lot of things. In her attempts to streamline the unfortunate realities of being a carbon-based life form, she had deprived herself of a lot of experiences most people correctly considered important. Entrapta was used to living up to high expectations, but truthfully, it felt really nice to just sit on her couch with her cat in her lap, curled up with someone who wanted her to be happy and comfortable and did not expect her to do or say or achieve anything beyond just being there. She felt herself starting to doze off; she had been sleeping a lot more, either because of the concussion or because her body was desperately trying to catch up on what she had withheld from it.

“You can stay the night if you want, but I have to warn you: I snore. So does Emily.” The cat lifted her head at the sound of her name and gave Entrapta a sleepy look. She scratched her fluffy chin with one finger. “Sorry, but you do.”

“I would like that,” he said after a moment.

“Good. It would have been really awkward if you’d said no. Will you have to go to the college tomorrow?”

“I have tenure. I don’t have to do anything.”

“Wow. I guess you’ll be free to make me breakfast, then.”

Hordak chuckled. He smoothed her hair against her head, an unexpected gesture of affection. “I guess I will.”

**Author's Note:**

> Follow me on Twitter @prettyalouettey and explain even one science to me. I won't understand it but I will appreciate the effort.


End file.
